Her Panther: An Urban Fantasy Romance (Silver Shifter Book 4) Read online

  Silver Shifter Book Four

  Her Panther

  Alexa B. James & Katherine Bogle

  Silver Shifter 4

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  Silver Shifter 4: Her Panther

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  Copyright © 2019 Alexa B. James & Katherine Bogle

  First Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher, except in cases of a reviewer quoting brief passages in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, and events are entirely coincidental. Use of any copyrighted, trademarked, or brand names in this work of fiction does not imply endorsement of that brand.

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  Cover Design by Katzilla Designs

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Ariana

  2. Ariana

  3. Cash

  4. Ariana

  5. Ariana

  6. Jett

  7. Ariana

  8. Ariana

  9. Ariana

  10. Ariana

  11. Ariana

  12. Ariana

  13. Maximus

  14. Ariana

  15. Ariana

  16. Ariana

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Chapter One

  Prologue

  The Lamia Queen

  My love had been missing for weeks. Every moment without her was agony. I felt it deep in my soul that she was still alive—she had to be. I would know if Jade was dead. No matter what the foolish vampires around me said, I would know. A connection like ours was born only once in a lifetime. She was my mate, my soul, and my heart. She was my everything.

  And someone had taken her from me.

  My love was out there, alone and afraid, needing me while I was in my penthouse, surrounded by all the things I normally loved: blood, sex, and fear. I had no illusions about what my people thought of me. They were just as terrified of me as shifters, witches, and the rest of the supernatural world. And they should be. I was a descendant of the gods, of the greatest witch to ever exist. Hecate, the mother of witches, had a daughter. Lamia had been cursed, and she passed that curse down to every girl that bore her blood. Including me. If I had never been bitten by a vampire, I’d have never known what I truly was or what I was meant to be. I’d never have ruled the vampires or governed the supernatural world, and I’d never have met Jade, who was only a century or so old at this point.

  Some days I still couldn’t believe my mate existed. After spending a millenia alone, feeling cold, heartless and numb over the life I’d lost, lightning struck the day I met Jade. My heart had restarted the moment I laid eyes on her, and having her taken from me was more painful than any kind of torture I could imagine.

  I sighed and closed my eyes. I took one last pull on the neck of the woman cradled in my arms before I released her chilled body. She fell to the floor in a heap at the foot of my throne. I stared at her sightless eyes for a moment. I felt nothing. I didn’t care that I was needlessly bleeding humans dry. Their blood helped soothe the void left by Jade’s disappearance, and that was all that mattered to me right now.

  “Bring me another,” I mumbled around the fangs poking my bottom lip.

  Whispers surrounded me, whispers that the Lamia Queen was losing her mind, that she’d gone insane with the loss of her wife. If only they knew how it felt to have this hole in my chest, maybe then they’d stop their whispering. I contemplated, not for the first time, showing them. Maybe if I drove my arm through their chests and ripped out their hearts they’d understand.

  “My queen.” A handsome man in a black suit bowed before me, then nudged another young woman forward to greet me. Her gaze was euphoric. One of my subjects must have feasted on her first. Though vampire bites didn’t typically cause euphoria in either vampire or human, they did when in my presence. For millennia, vampires had been following the Lamia because of our unique pheromones. When I fed, all those around me experienced sweet ecstasy.

  “Come to me,” I said. I beckoned the woman forward with my finger, and she knelt at my feet. She raised her chin to look at me, beaming with delight and tilting her head back to allow me access to her neck.

  I licked my lips and leaned forward in my seat. I grasped the back of her head and pulled her closer to me until she was almost in my lap.

  The woman shivered as I leaned closer and inhaled. She smelled divine—like vanilla and strawberries.

  I froze, my entire body going cold. She smelled like my Jade.

  I bared my teeth as my heart began to race. But before I could sink my teeth into her neck, a soft tinkling broke through the ecstasy induced moans filling what had once been an opulent dining room.

  The girl in my grasp squirmed and tilted her head back farther, desperate for my bite. The tinkle, like a soft tap on glass, sounded again. I drew back, shaking myself from the blood fog lying heavily over my brain. I released the girl, my gaze roaming the writhing bodies and bloody floor until I spotted a shadow at the window.

  My heart seized. I shot to my feet so quickly that I knocked the young woman back into the arms of my subject.

  “My queen?” the man asked, confused.

  I couldn’t remember his name, so I quickly waved away his concern and descended the few steps that led up to my throne. “Did you hear that?”

  The man glanced at the window, and his eyes widened.

  I took a step closer to the windows lining the right side of the room. Heavy burgundy curtains hung around the curved wooden arches of the windows, ready to be drawn during the day. But right now, with the curtains open and the light of the moon silhouetting the grotesque figure at my window, I could just make out the green of the creature’s eyes as it looked in at me.

  My love. My Jade. She’d come back to me.

  “Everyone out,” I commanded. The moaning and rustling of clothing stopped instantly.

  Breezes brushed by me in a rush as every vampire in the room took their meal and fled. My subject gave me a forlorn look as he took what had almost been my next meal out with him.

  Once the doors were firmly shut behind him, I raced to the windows and threw them open wide. The panes of glass shattered as they slapped the walls. I wasn’t regulating my strength like I’d normally do. I was too excited to have my love home.

  Only when the tinkle of shattered glass hitting the marble floor finally ceased did I realize my excitement was for naught. My love had returned to me, but she wasn’t the love I knew.

  “Jade?” I asked. My voice broke in such a pathetic way, I was happy no one was around to hear. I didn’t want my subjects to see me shatter like the window panes.

  A monster clung to the side of the skyscraper, green eyes ringed by black. It had long, black claws and hairless grey skin. Its features were twisted horribly, and as its mouth opened to emit a soft whine, I spotted several rows of jagged teeth.

  I took a step back. My whole body shook, and my eyes burned. The creature stepped off the window ledge into the room. Its legs were twisted at the knees, making them appear almost broken. Its muscles bunched as it sat back on its hind legs like an animal. It regarded me with uncertainty and familiarity, like it knew me but couldn’t place my face or remember how we’d
met.

  “Jade?” I asked again as tears swept my cheeks, and I crumbled to my knees. I reached for what had once been my love’s gorgeous face but hesitated when its lips drew back in a vicious sneer. “My love, what has happened? Who did this to you?”

  The creature tilted its head, confused.

  I let my hands fall into my lap. What in Hecate’s name had happened to my wife? What sick person had done this to her?

  As I regarded the creature and it regarded me, I realized that this wasn’t my Jade. It might have her green eyes, but it was like a dog finding its way home. It knew me, and might even feel some semblance of love for me. But it wasn’t Jade. There was no spark in her eyes—no sign of her intelligent mind or quick wit. It had only travelled to the one place it felt it belonged.

  My sob broke through the unbearable quiet, shaking my body and tightening my chest. I bent over, screaming out my loss to the empty room.

  My Jade wasn’t lost. She had been taken from me. Someone had stolen her and changed her into this. I looked up at the creature, but couldn’t reconcile the thing before me with the love of my life.

  As the monster leaned forward and touched its forehead to mine, something snapped inside of me. The faint scent of vanilla and strawberries brushed my nose, but it was tainted now.

  I stood, my fists clenching and my heart aching painfully. I couldn’t lose myself to my sorrow now. There would be time to mourn, but first, I had to find out what had happened to Jade, and if there was a way to reverse it.

  “Stay here, my love.” I brushed my fingertips along the creature’s cheek. It nuzzled my hand for only a moment, but the tiny motion was enough to solidify my next steps. “I will find out who did this to you, and I will make them undo it.”

  I slipped around the creature and inhaled the New York City air. Beneath the pollution and the smell of rain, I found my wife’s scent, and I followed it.

  By the time I found the end of Jade’s trail, anger burned through my body like flames. Whoever did this would pay. I would force them to fix my wife, and then I would tear apart everything and everyone they loved before their very eyes.

  I approached the warehouse cautiously. The building was drenched in the stench of humans and chemicals. It might appear to be a rundown old structure on the outside, but inside it was something else.

  I only circled the building once before the smell of blood hit my nose. If I wasn’t so full, and so angry, my throat might ache for a taste, but right now, all I had a taste for was revenge.

  Following Jade’s trail, I slipped inside a back door. A siren wailed and red warning lights flashed overhead. I stepped over the dead bodies of guards, men and women dressed in lab coats, and even a few janitorial staff. At last, I had found my wife’s cage.

  It was made of glass, and I could hardly believe they thought it capable of holding my ferocious Jade. She might have been mild mannered and meek as a human, but as a vampire she was a force to be reckoned with. And yet, her cell smelled not only of vampire and monster, but of human.

  My eyes widened as I realized what had happened. Jade had been turned human, and in some sort of experiment, she’d been made a monster.

  Fury burned hot through my veins, and magic dampened the air. An electric current sent tiny shocks across my skin, calling on the supernatural forces of my ancestors to raze the world to the ground.

  Rustling sounds in the hallway hit my ears. I swivelled to face the door. Though I didn’t need to breathe, I took a deep breath. The act was calming in itself, and it forced me to focus on the situation at hand. The magic in the air faded as I regained control. Someone was still alive in here. Would that someone be the culprit who made my love so grotesque?

  I blurred into the hallway and followed the sound. A woman coughed repeatedly, her lungs wheezing as she tried to inhale the smoke tainted air. I slid to a stop in the middle of a ransacked office.

  A woman with white hair and broken glasses startled, a gasp flying from her lips. “Who are you?”

  I tilted my head, my predatory instincts telling me to kill now and ask questions later. But the vengeful side of me won out as I stalked forward and crouched in front of the woman wearing a lab coat.

  “Who are you?” I demanded. “And what is going on here?”

  Her eyebrows furrowed as she looked me up and down. I probably looked a sight, covered in blood with wild blonde curls falling around my face. I hadn’t slept in days, hadn’t done anything more than drink and fuck. It was all I could do to blur the lines of my new reality.

  “M-Muriel,” she stammered, “Doctor Muriel Siegfried.”

  “Doctor, you say?” I raised an eyebrow and clenched my fists. “What did you do to my Jade?”

  Muriel’s eyes widened in surprise. “Y-You know Jade?”

  I grabbed her throat and tore her up off the floor, slamming her into the wall several feet off the ground. She choked as I squeezed just tight enough to constrict her breathing but not tight enough to break anything. I needed her alive, after all.

  “What. Did. You. Do. To. Jade?” I growled out each word through my teeth.

  Muriel spluttered for a moment before I loosened my grip enough that she could breathe. The doctor inhaled, only to begin coughing again. After a few moments, she got herself together enough to look me in the eye. “I wanted to know what would happen if a cured vampire was turned again.”

  My eyes widened. “You turned my Jade human and then tried to change her back?”

  Muriel trembled as she shook her head. “I didn’t make her human.”

  My fingers tightened, again constricting the doctor’s breathing. “Then the Silver Shifter did?” Muriel struggled against my hold, clawing at my hands. She nodded vehemently until I loosened my grip once more.

  So the Silver Shifter was to blame. I knew I should have killed that pathetic wolf when I had the chance. I should have sent more men after her—stronger men. If I had taken over before Victor Bancroft’s death, none of this would have happened. I’d been a fool to allow men to do a queen’s job.

  “You will change her back,” I said.

  Muriel’s mouth dropped open. “I don’t think I can.”

  I squeezed her throat in warning. “I did not ask what you think you can do. You will return my wife to me, or you will pray for death.”

  The doctor whimpered but nodded in agreement.

  I dropped her without ceremony and took a step back. “You will find a way.” I turned to the door, my heart pounding as my fury fought its way forward once more. “Now, I have a nuisance to dispose of.”

  1

  Ariana

  Pain tore through me like a million tiny needles slicing into my skin. I groaned. My body wouldn’t respond. I wasn’t sure how high I’d been thrown by the Lamia Queen, but it was high enough to make my entire body go numb.

  “Ariana!” Owen bellowed.

  I heard growling and saw fireballs flying, but I couldn’t turn my head to see my mates as they fought for their lives.

  Frustration turned my stomach and had me blinking back tears. My mates were fighting against a vampire who could wield magic, and I could barely think past the pain subduing me. I needed to help them. I had to protect them as much as they protected me. We were in this together. After all we’d been through, I couldn’t let one vampire tear us apart.

  A roar ripped through the clearing, and howls rose up to meet it. Heat bathed my skin as Cash doused the lawn in flames.

  I need to move!

  Gritting my teeth, I closed my fists. So I could still move—thank goodness.

  “Ana,” Owen breathed out my name as he fell to his knees at my side. His massive hands slid beneath my head, then my back. He cradled me against his chest while inspecting me for injuries. “I’ll get you out of here.”

  I winced. “No. I can’t leave them.”

  “Ariana—”

  “No!” I cut him off. Heat burned through my body. My beasties wanted so desperately to come to my aid, bu
t it was like a cage held them back. “I’m not leaving any of you.”

  Owen’s fierce expression softened. “All right, Ana.”

  “Help me up,” I said. With desperation coursing through my veins, I was slowly gaining the feeling back in my stunned body. The needling sensation was subsiding, leaving behind a soreness I knew I’d be feeling for at least the next couple of days.

  Owen rose before setting me on my feet. He waited, one arm wrapped around my waist until I could stand without wobbling.

  I sighed in relief, grateful I hadn’t been paralyzed.

  A screech of rage tore through the night, and magic lit the air, purple light dancing around Helena’s fingertips as she threw out a hand. At some point Maximus’ pack had arrived, but with one twitch of the Lamia Queen’s wrist, they were thrown across the grass like a great gust of wind had slammed into them. While some leapt back to their feet, and others tore through their clothes, some lay motionless on the lawn.

  Swallowing hard and quickly looked away. They couldn’t be dead just like that. They were only stunned.

  “You okay?” Owen asked.

  Another breath of fire scorched the earth not ten feet behind Owen.

  “I’m okay,” I assured him. I reached inside myself and found my new companion. My bear responded immediately, rumbling like distant thunder. She was ready to fight for her mates as much as I was.

  “Maximus, watch out!” Shira screamed.

  I turned in time to watch Helena grab my mate by the throat and throw him as if he weighed nothing. Maximus crashed into one of his packmates, sending them both sprawling across the ground.